Environment

A girl running on the coastal area in Kalimantan where USAID helped replant mangroves.

Janice Laurente, USAID/Indonesia

Indonesia is highly vulnerable to both climate change and a wide range of weather-related natural disasters. Given Indonesia’s growth and settlement patterns, disaster-related losses and casualties will have an even larger impact on human development in the future, particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable. Addressing climate and disaster risks is critical: both the public and private sectors in Indonesia must move to systematically integrate climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) into their investments and planning processes.

USAID works with the Government of Indonesia to help the most vulnerable areas of Indonesia to become more resilient to the effects of climate change. USAID builds local government and civil society organizational capacity to understand the effects of climate change, and implement climate change solutions in agriculture, water, and natural resources management. By working together, we can ensure that current and future generations will continue to benefit from Indonesia’s natural resources and live in a cleaner and healthier environment.

USAID supported the conversation and management of eight million hectares of high conservation and carbon value forests.

By helping improve land-use planning and forest conservation management, USAID has helped reduce 4.8 million tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of removing close to one million cars off streets.

USAID has worked with more than 360 communities across Indonesia to develop action plans to address the impacts of climate change. To achieve this, we have trained more than 13,000 people in disaster risk reduction and climage change adaptation strategies.

Since 2011, USAID's $18 million investment in clean energy programs have leveraged close to $269 million in private financing, noteably for small scale hydropower, biomass, Palm Oil Mill Effluent to biogass for power generation, and energy efficiency applications in industrial facilities.

Facilitated access to clean energy for over 200,000 people.

Faciliated access to clean water for more than 2,000,000 people and basic sanitation to more than 200,000 people.

​Current Programs

Conserving Biodiversity

USAID’s supports the development and implementation of environmental policies, laws, and regulations while implementing alternative economic development strategies that encourage sustainable resources management.

Marine and Fisheries Sector: Indonesia is at the center of the world’s marine biodiversity, Indonesia ranks as the second largest marine capture fisheries producer in the world. However, marine and fisheries resources are threatened by a range of human activities, including overfishing and illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing coupled by climate change impacts. USAID supports the Government of Indonesia in strengthening the technical and operational capacity of the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, local authorities, the private sector, universities, communities, and others, to improve sustainable fisheries management and marine biodiversity conservation.

Terrestrial Sector: Indonesia’s expansive tropical rain-forests, peat-land, and mangroves contain carbon stocks of global importance. These forests also house key species and provide valuable ecosystem services, such as water filtration and pollution control, for more than 30 million people, however, a recent study released by the University of Maryland showed that from 2000 to 2012 Indonesia lost 38 percent of its forests.

USAID builds capacity in national and local government bodies, and associated civil society actors, and enters partnerships, to strengthen and promote sustainable land-use management and practices in eight landscapes stretching across four provinces: Papua, Central Kalimantan, North Sumatra, and Aceh. Our projects focus on conserving large swaths of lowland and peat forest with high concentrations of biodiversity.

Strengthening Climate Change Resilience

As one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the world, Indonesia made a bold commitment to reduce its emissions by 29% alone by 2030, and by 41% with international assistance. USAID supports efforts to reduce GHG emissions and to improve awareness and the ability to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction: About 87% of Indonesia’s reduction targets for GHG emissions come from the natural resources sector. USAID programs improve land-use planning, natural resources governance, forest management, and adaptation of low emission development strategies for national and local government authorities, as well as for communities highly dependent on natural resources.

Climate Change Adaptation: USAID works with the Government of Indonesia to help the most vulnerable areas of Indonesia to become more resilient to the effects of climate change. USAID builds local government and civil society organizational capacity to understand the effects of climate change, and implement climate change solutions in agriculture, water, and natural resources management.